Aunt Lyla and Uncle Harry James

This is a photo of one of the six Torrance sisters, Lyla Torrance James, with her husband, Harry, and a big fish.  Aunt Lyla was the sister, just younger than her brother, my grandfather, Sam Torrence, who he credited with saving his life during the Great Influenza Epidemic of 1917-1918.   Granddaddy got the 'flu, along with his mother, and was put to bed in the coldest room in the house, the parlor.  At that time, fevers were treated by withholding food.  Lyla sneaked food to her brother during his bout.  He didn't die, of course, but many others did, including his mother.

 

Uncle Harry was Aunt Lyla's first and only husband.  She married him relatively late in her life, because he couldn't marry her until his first wife died.  Harry and Lyla met and fell in love while his wife was a patient in a mental hospital.  I stayed with Harry and Lyla many weekends at their home in Whitby, Ontario, when I went to art school in Toronto, in the mid-1970s.